


The Sky Is Falling

by livtontea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Time Travel, BAMF Klaus Hargreeves, Basically author looks at the comics and goes hMMMMMMMM, Episode: s01e10 The White Violin, Gen, No Apocalypse (Umbrella Academy), No Incest, Saving the World, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 12:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: You could say that this is Klaus’s first-ever concert.It’s not a very good one.





	The Sky Is Falling

**Author's Note:**

> So chapter 6 of The Apocalypse Suite and episode 10 of the show, huh?

Klaus has never been to a concert before. He’s never really seen the point, never really had the time. It’s just music, isn’t it? He can always listen to music at home, wherever that is at the moment.

Of course, once he figured out Vanya, his little sister herself, is playing at the Icarus, he tried to sneak into one or two. Keyword being “tried.”

So you could say that this is Klaus’s first-ever concert.

It’s not a very good one.

That’s not to say that Vanya’s playing isn’t great, because from what he can hear over the shouting and gunshots, it’s pretty good. Of course, he doesn’t really know anything about orchestral music, so he’s not one to judge.

Now that he thinks about it, the whole “murder assassins” and “end of the world” shebang might have something to do with the overall mood of the concert.

Yeah. Klaus’s first concert is a mess.

He’s also been put on lookout duty, which, seriously? Now? He’s sober, for fuck’s sake, he can help! He has the same training as all of them, and they put him, when he could be helpful, on fucking _lookout_?

Sometimes it feels like nobody in the family appreciates him.

But right now he’s inside, trying to catch notes of Vanya’s performance. He’s also trying to stay alive, which okay, maybe lookout duty has a point.

“Klaus!”

And Ben is here. Of course he is, it’s not like him to miss important events, much less the end of the world.

“Klaus, do it! Manifest me!”

The words don’t quite register in Klaus’s brain, at first, but when they do, he gasps in delight. Of course! If Ben is here, that means he can summon his tentacles, which means, well…

It means Klaus’s fists glow blue and with a mental push Ben is solid and screaming, and his eldritch horror starts ripping people in half, throwing the bloody remains everywhere. Not the prettiest thing to look at, and definitely not a sight for somebody with a weak stomach.

Good thing Klaus has seen worse. He can feel eyes trained on either him or Ben, but it doesn’t matter which, because for a moment, for a brief moment that seems to last forever, they are one.

“Ben,” someone calls.

“Ha!” Klaus exclaims, gasping for breath as the last of the assassins fall to the floor, most of them missing some crucial body parts. Ben fades out of blue and into ghost, which is disappointing but not surprising, for both of them. “Now who’s the lookout?” He turns to his siblings (sans Vanya and Diego, and speaking of which, where is he?) who are looking at him with surprise. Panicked laughter escapes his throat. Ben turns to Klaus, smiling in disbelief.

Nobody says anything. Klaus scoffs. Of course only Ben showing up to completely demolish a bunch of murderers will convince them Klaus can see him.

But it’s not over yet. Vanya’s not finished with her solo.

Waves of power radiate from her, and Klaus watches as her violin turns completely white. Everything starts shaking, cracks running down the columns of the theatre and plaster falling from the roof. Vanya keeps playing.

She glows. A beacon in the dark, she glows brighter and brighter until Klaus has to shield his eyes just to look at her.

Diego walks into the auditorium, knife in hand.

“Woah, welcome back, where were you?” Luther questions.

Diego’s answer is short. “Honoring a memory.”

Without pause, he barrels on into the next sentence. “So, how do you want to end this thing?”

“We surround her!” Luther yells. He has to, over the roar of the violin. “We come at her from all angles.”

“So it’s a suicide mission,” Klaus whispers.

“Yeah, but one of us could get through,” snaps Five. “It’s the only chance we’ve got.” For the first time in what Klaus thinks is ever, Five seems on the edge of losing hope.

“Are we all in?”

“Yeah.” Klaus nods, his voice quiet and clear. “Yeah, let’s save the world.”

“Alright. Allison?” Luther asks their sister, biting his lip when she shakes her head in pointless disagreement. “Stage left. Stage right.” He nods at Diego, points at himself. “You guys take the front.” And then they’re all scrambling to get into position, feet pounding against the floor, drowned out by the music.

Distantly, Klaus hears Luther yelling to Allison, “I’m sorry, Allison! There’s no time. If she finishes this concert, the world goes up in flames!” And what a pity they won’t get to see what happens when the bow stops dancing across the strings of their sister’s violin, because Klaus is sure that the world going up in flames is not the worst thing that could happen.

Vanya’s music swells. Crescendo, Klaus thinks it’s called, the word from a long time ago resurfacing in his memory. Vanya is now composed of all white, growing still brighter every note she plays.

Klaus looks up in awe, and thinks that this is who his sister really is. Who she’s supposed to be. Not meek and timid Vanya, who doesn’t know how to say what she wants, or how to stop people from putting words in her mouth, but this glowing creature with music twirling from her fingers. Not Vanya, but a violin.

Luther screams, a hoarse shriek of “now,” a command, and Klaus has spent nearly a year in the war, following orders. He pushes himself up and runs.

As soon as they’re close, close enough for the melody in their ears to be nearly deafening, Vanya strikes out with her bow, engulfing them all in brilliant light. For a moment, Klaus is scared he’s about to be coated in red, but that never happens. He’s in the air, floating, suspended by a tendril of pure energy. Luther, Diego, and Five are beside him, and Vanya is the center of it all.

Ben is next to Vanya, his unheard pleas doing nothing to stop her recital of doom.

Somehow, in some way, even though Vanya isn’t playing, the music continues. She looks at them with cold dead eyes, looking but not seeing. Apathetic. Klaus has a lot of experience with eyes like that. They don’t fit on his sister’s face, looking foreign and _wrong_.

Klaus shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to watch as his sister, because no matter what, that’s what she is, his _sister_, end him and the rest of the world alongside.

Klaus can feel the life draining from his body, his face manifesting wrinkles and lines, his skin starting to become dry and old. He’s going to die in a minute, he knows. Maybe he’ll finally be able to hug Ben.

And then there’s a gunshot and Klaus drops to the ground, hand pressed against his chest and lungs and mouth gasping for breath.

His eyes are open, and there’s a stream of light pouring out of Vanya’s chest, shooting into the ceiling and past that, into the sky. Glass shatters and falls down.

There’s no more music.

Allison, dear Allison who just had a gun aimed at their sister’s head and then right beside it moments after, catches Vanya as she collapses to the ground, knocked out.

“Is she alive?” Luther says, rushed and frantic. Allison’s hands are already on Vanya’s neck, no doubt checking for that telltale_ boom boom boom_ of a heartbeat.

“Yeah,” she whispers through her mangled throat.

“She is? Yeah?” Luther checks and Allison nods in confirmation.

“Oh thank god,” Klaus says, which may be a poor choice of words, seeing as how God doesn’t care much for him. He presses a hand to his face, sighing in relief both at the fact that his sister is alive and not destroying everything, and that he’s still here and not about to be sucked dry of life.

“We did it,” says Diego. “We saved the world.”

Klaus laughs, and Ben does too, but nobody but him hears. Allison is crying.

“Oh, man,” Klaus sighs again. He turns around, because is it just him, or can anybody else hear it? He stands, facing the busted window on the ceiling.

“Uh… Guys?” he says, hand outstretched.

Everybody looks at the chunk of something hurtling at them, small so far but growing in size at an alarming rate.

“You see that big moon rock coming toward us?” He knows they do.

“That’s not good,” Luther points out, ever trusted to state the obvious.

“So this is it, huh?” Klaus’s hands reach up to his chest, fingers brushing over Dave’s dog tags. “So much for saving the world.”

The pieces of metal clink together, and Klaus looks down to look at them one last time. Ben stands by him, hand poised over his shoulder like he wants to offer comfort but knows it’s pointless. It is.

“If only Sir Reginald could see us now, huh?” Diego says, mocking even as their impending doom comes closer. “The Umbrella Academy.” And then quieter, like it’s forbidden, “A total failure.”

Five collapses to his knees, discreetly wiping the tears from his eyes.

“At least we’re together at the end,” Luther mumbles. “As a family.” And what a great family they are, treating each other horribly enough to cause the literal end of the world.

Five opens his mouth like he’s about to speak, but it shuts just as fast, and the six conscious siblings remain silent. The rock flies closer, and Klaus has no doubt that people are looking out their windows right now, and realizing, this is the end.

“We tried,” says Klaus to nobody. “Maybe Five will be able to try again, huh?” He laughs without any humor.

“Hey,” says Ben, his face illuminated by the moonlight. “I love you, okay? You’re my brother and I love you.”

Klaus laughs. “I love you too, Ben. See you on the other side.”

As the rock comes crashing into the Earth, the so-called Hargreeves family closing their eyes, Klaus turns his head away from the sky and holds a hand out to the asteroid, because that’s one hell of a way to go, isn’t it?

And then with his eyes shut, he dies.

Except…

He can still feel the wood under his bare feet, which reminds him he should have probably worn shoes to the battle of all battles, the final show-off, as one might say. He can still feel the warm and suffocating air on his skin, and he can still feel his pulse drumming through his body.

He can still feel it as somebody gets up and places a small warm hand on his arm, the handprint setting his skin aflame. He can still feel everything as his eyes open.

“Incredible…” Five’s voice sounds close to his ear. “You just saved the entire world.”

Klaus looks at his still outstretched hand and then lets his eyes wander beyond that, at the beginning of a massive boulder hovering just above his palm. It’s crashed through the ceiling of the theatre, crashed through the columns and the glass windows, and it’s stopped just a meter or two from the ground.

And Klaus’s hand is the thing that stopped it.

“What…” He doesn’t dare move a muscle except allow his mouth to open so he can breathe out that single syllable.

Ben laughs. Klaus thinks he’s crying. “I told you!” he yells. “I told you being sober isn’t pointless!”

A smile tentatively stretches across Klaus’s mouth. “Holy shit,” he says. And then louder, once more, “Holy shit!”

Diego starts laughing. Allison is crying with a grin on her face, and Luther is looking up at the lump of rock that just missed destroying the world, stunned.

“Push it back,” Ben tells him. “Push it back to the moon.”

Klaus shuts his eyes, again, and thinks with all his might until slowly, the rock shakes and starts drifting back where it came from.

“Oh crap,” he says, because if God doesn’t like him he might as well just not use her name. “This is going to take a while.”

He finally drops his hand, still thinking of the rock moving away from the Earth, and falls to the floor. He doesn’t take his eyes off it though, just to be safe.

Five falls down next to him, leaning on Klaus’s shoulder. He’s laughing, but the laughter doesn’t waste time turning into sobs, and then he’s full-on crying into Klaus’s jacket.

“Hey, it’s okay,” tries to soothe him Klaus. “We did it. We stopped the apocalypse.”

Five lightly punches him through his sobbing, and maybe Klaus is just really tired, but he thinks he can see a smile on the little man’s face.

It ends up taking nearly a full day for Klaus to drift (levitate?) the moon rock back to the moon and fit it in. For a moment, as he lets his powers go, he’s terrified that it’ll just fall back out and the same thing will happen. It doesn’t. The chunk stays in, and the moon is whole again.

When he’s done, he falls. It’s tiring, saving the world, he thinks. Allison, Luther, and Diego had left a while ago, one or two of them coming around every so and so to bring food and water. Five stayed, watching the planet go further and further away from demolishment.

Ben stayed too. Unseen and unheard by anybody other than Klaus, like he usually is. Five keeps mumbling to the air, and Klaus thinks he may be talking to Ben, even if it’s one-sided.

Five moves over to where Klaus is laying on his back and presses a hand to his shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Mm. Tired,” Klaus says, too drained for multisyllabic language.

“Oh.”

Ben settles in next to Klaus on the other side. “Luther should come around soon, he could probably carry you home.”

A short laugh that sounds more like a wheeze finds its way out of his throat. There’s something undeniably hilarious about Luther in all his beefy glory carrying the stick that is Klaus all the way home.

Except…

“The Academy was destroyed,” he says. “There is no home.”

Five groans. “Why do you have to say it so ominously?” He sounds like he’s on the verge of passing out, and if he’s being honest, that doesn’t surprise Klaus. Staying up watching him levitate a chunk of the moon through space would tire anybody.

Klaus closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to think about the Academy right now, on second thought.

Ben shifts so he’s sitting with his legs crossed, arms reaching out behind him, his palms pressing against the floor. He looks at the sky, where the moon is visible. To think that something so pretty and symbolic could bring so much terror and pain.

Ben sighs. So does Klaus. Almost like he can hear them both, Five exhales, long and heavy.

"What happens now?” he mumbles, stifling a yawn.

“We wait for Luther to come and carry us home,” says Klaus, completely serious. “I don’t think I can get up.”

“Mm.” Five turns his head to the side so he’s looking at Klaus. “Is Ben here?”

Klaus blinks. “Weren’t you talking to him before?”

“No. I was… mumbling, I guess. Is he?”

Klaus looks at his slightly transparent brother, sitting on the floor next to him and Five. “Yeah. He always is.”

“Can you tell him thank you?” Five says, dangerously close to yawning. “For taking out the assassins.”

“You’re welcome,” says Ben. He reaches his hand out, stopping just before his hand would have pressed against Five’s skin if he was alive or if Klaus had enough energy to bring him to the land of the living.

“He says no problem,” paraphrases Klaus. “And he can hear you, you know.”

Five sighs, a yawn finally tearing itself from his mouth. “I want to sleep.”

“Go ahead,” Klaus tells him. “I’ll be the lookout,” he says, tiredly smirking at his own joke.

Five doesn’t give him a response, instead setting down with his head on Klaus’s chest.

“Whatcha doing, little old man?”

Five doesn’t snap at the nickname, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“You’re comfortable,” he mumbles defensively. “Shut up.”

“I think he’s either listening to your breathing or your heartbeat,” comments Ben. “You should let him stay.” And of course, Klaus didn’t have it in his intentions to do otherwise. Five’s steady breathing feels very grounding, and besides, who is he to deny his brother confirmation of his own aliveness?

Klaus sluggishly moves a hand to Five’s hair, running his fingers through it. He hums. Five’s hair is soft, pleasant to the touch.

They fall asleep in the middle of the ruined Icarus Theatre, apocalypse successfully avoided, the world finally allowing them to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was fun because I decided "fuck it" and just wrote run-on sentences. Klaus saving the world in the comics is very pleasing to me, so this happened. Also how did they get rid of a massive rock hovering like, maybe 8 feet above the Earth? Like I'm aware you can't just put it back like a puzzle piece but this is the best I've got.
> 
> Drop a line, I'd like to know what you think! My tumblr is [@seven-misfits](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/) if you want it.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
